Beyond the Glamour: Travel Realities

In today’s world, travel is heavily romanticized. Social media feeds are filled with stunning landscapes, exotic destinations and thrilling adventures, painting a picture of a traveler's life as one of constant wonder. As someone who gets asked, “Where are you?” more than, “How are you?” on phone calls, I can attest that the reality is more nuanced.

While my journeys do take me to amazing places and occasions, whether witnessing the Northern Lights in the Arctic, watching a cricket match in Dubai, or exploring stunning landscapes of Canada or Australia, these experiences are mostly intertwined with work. It requires a lot of planning to weave my personal interests around work obligations, making every trip a major balancing act.

It’s never about ticking off destinations or checking items off a bucket list for me. More often, my trips are driven by necessity; they are always accompanied by sudden meetings across time zones, conference schedules, and long unplanned stays for forging fruitful business partnerships. All this, in a relentless push to sustain and expand a global business that grew during the pandemic.

There are moments when the challenges become stark. Imagine being stuck in a hotel room, battling a high fever, all alone, far away from home and without any semblance of comfort. On these days, the glamour of whichever city you’re in and the beauty of the skyline outside fade quickly, replaced by the raw reality of somehow managing to stay functional. 

The logistics of constant movement, and the costs that come with it, can be overwhelming as well. Every trip involves careful planning and countless considerations; optimizing modes of travel (cost versus time versus convenience), choosing accommodations (check-in timings versus location versus safety), balancing work commitments (deadlines, coordination, follow-ups), and figuring out the personal time (sleep, food quality, hygiene). Travel can certainly be enriching, but it comes with its own set of challenges and sacrifices.

And the toll doesn’t end when you return home. It lingers longer than expected, even as you try to rest, recover, and settle back into routine as quickly as possible. (Sometimes, before you’ve fully done that, the next trip comes calling!) This accumulated weariness is rarely captured in tags and likes of social media posts, which tend to tell only one side of the story. 

Travel is often sold as transformation, escape, or enlightenment, when in reality it is frequent movement and displacement; of routines, of health, of energy, of comfort. It doesn’t automatically broaden the mind or elevate the soul, it simply shifts the same responsibilities into unfamiliar surroundings. For me, travel is neither an indulgence nor an identity, but a tool; often a necessity, occasionally a privilege and sometimes a strain. Acknowledging this doesn’t diminish the experiences it offers, it simply restores balance to the narrative. It allows us to see travel not as an aspiration, but as what it truly is: a choice with costs and consequences.